We have seen the topic of an Android powered netbook come up a few times now, we have even seen Android get installed on an Eee PC, now Always Innovating have announced the pre-order availability of their Touch Book netbook.

The Touch Book offers a unique design, with half of the unit being a touchscreen display and the other half being a detachable keyboard. As far as the hardware features, the Touch Book will have an 8.9-inch 1024 x 600 display, an 8GB microSD card for storage, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, an accelerometer, 6 USB ports, speakers, microphone in, headphone out as well as a battery life of between 10 to 15 hours.

Although the Touch Book is available for pre-order, in all honesty it is technically not really running Android. That said, they do mention on the FAQ that “you can install many other OSes, including Google Android, Ubuntu, Angstrom, and Windows CE. You are free to do whatever you want.”

Basically this means that an Android powered netbook has not truly been announced, but at the same time it is slightly encouraging to see Android get a listing as a potential operating system. Of course, that could also be a cheap ploy to attract the attention of Android fans like myself.

As far as the unit, it will actually come with the Touch Book OS installed by default. Additionally, it is priced at $299 for just the touchscreen or $399 for the complete unit with keyboard and is expected to be available by June 2009.

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They’ve said that they’re using their own flavor of Linux, but you’re free to install any ARM-based Linux distribution. The hardware used in the Touch Book is a modified BeagleBoard, which has been shown to run Google Android.